The judge of instruction 1 of Barcelona criticizes the president of Barça, Joan Laporta, who wants to accuse Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell, the predecessors, of disloyal administration when he also paid Negreira. In an interlocutory order handed down yesterday, the magistrate Joaquín Aguirre rejects again – the club presented an appeal which was dismissed – that Barcelona can be a private prosecution for the crime of disloyal administration.
Barça had requested to be able to have a double condition in the judicial process: investigated for the crime of sports corruption and prosecution for the crime of disloyal administration (paying an overcharge for a service), since it considered that the club had been harmed by the performance of former presidents. This request opened the possibility that FC Barcelona, ??as a legal entity, could accuse, once the investigation is over, the accused ex-presidents, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu. For this reason, the judge criticizes Laporta for adopting this position when he also paid Negreira with the difference that his crime has been prescribed due to the passage of time and not because of the “unlawfulness of his acts”. “Laporta’s conduct in this regard is identical to that of subsequent presidents,” the judge emphasized. He considers it “contrary to all ethics that whoever committed acts identical to those of subsequent presidents intends to impersonate the cause and exercise the particular accusation under the legal instrument of FC Barcelona, ??as if it were an abstract entity with an ‘I’ other than that of the club managers”. And he adds that “it is not ethically permissible for Laporta to accuse Presidents Rosell and Bartomeu of the crime of disloyal administration when there are more than enough indications that Laporta committed the same acts as subsequent presidents. The facts mentioned consist of the fact that FC Barcelona would have paid inflated amounts of money to José María Enríquez Negreira to be one of the vice-presidents of the Technical Committee of Referees of the Royal Spanish Football Federation”.
In addition, in the legal field, the judge argues that the two crimes are related, which in technical language is called in competition. The judge considers that disloyal administration was committed, as money was taken from the club’s coffers to commit a crime of sports corruption or bribery of Negreira.
